Poor App Performance Hits Employee Productivity: Study

There is a significant gap between business needs and the reality of application performance. The Riverbed Global Application Performance Survey 2015 highlights that although 98 per cent of executives agree that app performance is critical to enterprise success, 89 per cent believe that poor app performance is hindering employee productivity, reducing revenue and impacting on employee morale. It also results in dissatisfied clients or customers, contract delays, missed deadlines, and lost clients or customers, the survey notes.

Although there are a number of causes for disappointing app performance, many businesses are finding that issues stem from compatibility problems between cloud-based and on-premise apps. Although cloud computing has brought a number of flexibility and agility benefits to enterprise firms, it has also caused more complexity.

Companies agree that business performance relies on application performance. And yet 9 out of 10 organizations suffer from poor performance on a regular basis. One cause of this performance gap is the move to hybrid IT. There is an increased difficulty in getting end-to-end visibility into the complex, hybrid IT architectures that result from the use of both cloud and on-premises apps.

About 94% of respondents say they believe trouble-shooting application performance issues is more difficult in a hybrid IT environment. In fact, according to a survey by Forrester, the majority of companies (51%) say that application complexity is now their primary obstacle to mastering application performance. On average, it takes 10 hours for Indian businesses to completely resolve serious app problems.

“The results of the survey reflect what we’re hearing every day from IT leaders who are looking to deliver superior application performance in the midst of rapidly evolving, highly complex and hybrid IT environments,” said Bjorn Engelhardt, Senior Vice President, Asia Pacific & Japan at Riverbed Technology.

“This is equally important in the Indian context, especially when Digital India is becoming a reality. With millions of devices, apps, data and users accessing the network today, the modern enterprise depends already on applications for almost every task. Companies need end-to-end application visibility, optimization, and control to deliver the performance their customers, their employees and the market expects, he opines.

For example, 76% of respondents in India say they have frequently felt “in the dark” about why their enterprise applications are running slowly, spotlighting a disconnect between IT teams and business executives. This is echoed by 71 % of businesses globally (76% in EMEA and 75% across Asia).

Troublingly, executives can contribute to the problem as they try to work around it: 45% of respondents in India say they have used unsupported apps when corporate apps run slowly or stop working altogether, thus adding to infrastructure complexity with more “shadow IT.”

In summary, business executives agree that application performance is critical to business performance and driving results, yet the vast majority are impacted by poor app performance, creating a performance gap. At the same time, business executives are leveraging the power of cloud-based applications and hybrid networks to elevate productivity and create happier, more loyal customers and employees.

Riverbed further recommends that in order to deliver superior application performance in today’s hybrid environments, enterprises need a comprehensive solution that provides end-to-end visibility, optimization and control.

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